


Delusions of a Tortured Mind

by ghostlywhitedirewolf



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Don't worry, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries, I will add warnings to the notes of each chapter, Loss of Memory, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Nothing too explicit, PTSD, Panic Attacks, graphic descriptions of violence and torture, more tags as the fic progresses, these will come mainly in later chapters, trigger warnings first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:56:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5360159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlywhitedirewolf/pseuds/ghostlywhitedirewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before someone can be saved, they must first be broken. In order for someone to be put back together, they must be taken apart. Bucky Barnes knows what it feels like to be dismantled, piece by piece. How can he make himself whole if he has no concept of what complete is? Bucky Barnes has only one constant. A blond man with a soft voice and a gentle touch. He doesn't understand, just knows that for some reason, that man seems to signify home.</p><p>[Please heed the tags and warnings at the beginnings of each chapter.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delusions of a Tortured Mind

**Author's Note:**

> So, this has been my baby for the last few weeks, I'm quite protective of it as it's possibly the darkest thing I've posted so far. I'm a little scared about how it will be received, but I really need the feedback on it so that I know how best to continue forward.
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoy it :)
> 
> Please, if I've not tagged for anything you think I should, tell me! 
> 
> Chapter 1 warnings: suicidal thoughts, torture, rape (not very descriptive)
> 
>  
> 
> Translations:  
> фокус - focus

-o-

Bucky comes to on a familiar slab.

No, not familiar.

Familiar implies comfort, home, safety and the cold, clinical room is anything but homely. It's the polar opposite to his, no _their_ home in Brooklyn; it's not home without Steve there, whichever Steve it is.

 

Bucky wonders where Steve is; is he looking for him? Does he think that Bucky's dead? Is Steve even alive? Falling from the train pretty much guaranteed certain death without whatever shit Zola had injected him with. His whole body throbs, wounds tearing again as he moves and fresh blood begins to trickle over dried blood, darkening the red that is smeared across his whole torso.

He groans, shaking his head in an attempt to clear the fuzz and fog that constantly seem to surround his brain lately. Bucky knows that these moments are becoming fewer and further between. These moments of lucidity becoming less often.

_Focus._

_Focus on me soldier._

_Focus._

The words echo around his mind and Bucky scrunches up his eyes as though that would block out the noise. Hypnosis. 

He knows that this is what's happening, knows that he can't fight it.

He wishes that he could rip the man's ring finger off and shove it so far down his throat that he chokes on it.

 

The injuries that he came round to last time are healed, new ones in their place, increasing the spiderweb of scars on his chest and mapping out a route of destruction that had been inflicted throughout his first stay with HYDRA, his fall from the train and now his second stint with Zola. He was no longer sure if the injuries are self inflicted or part of their torture techniques.

 

He hates when he wakes up lucid; these are the times he knows that they're coming for him. They never torture him for information whilst he's out of it. Bucky doesn't understand. What kind of hypnosis allows you to remember everything you've done? He doesn't think it works properly on him due to the serum, but sometimes Bucky can see everything that is happening to him, can see the exact moment that his fingers pull the trigger and end some poor captive's life. They don't trust him enough to send him out on lone missions yet. Know that he's still _himself_ enough to run if he has the chance. They can't take the risk of him 'betraying' them, he knows too much, could find them if he really had to. They know that he's still loyal to his team, to Steve, to America.

 

Bucky still wakes shouting the blond man's name. Sometimes it's his own name and rank, sometimes it's Steve's name. No matter what they've tried so far they haven't managed to erase _Bucky_ from Bucky.

They call him many things; soldier, asset, it, experiment, but never Bucky. Never James Buchanan Barnes like Steve had when he were angry. When they are angry with him, he is punished, sometimes to the brink of death but never quite pushing him over. He wishes that they would.Wishes that they would kill him. By accident, deliberately, he doesn't care. Give him a weapon and he'll kill himself.

 

Captain America is dead they've told him.

 

Bucky isn't sure whether it's the truth, but he also has no idea how long he's been here any more. Between the hypnosis and the chamber, god the chamber.

Cryo they call it.

_Put him in cryo._

_He's been out too long. He's coming back to himself._

Coming back? Surely he never left.

Bucky doesn't understand. He knows who he is– sometimes.

His arm healed a long time ago he thinks. It still hurts like hell though, electric pulses through his entire body whenever he disobeys. Red hot flashes of agony that bring him to his knees. That hadn't happened at first so it must be an upgrade. He's always conscious for those. Always able to see them stripping the metal away and replacing the hardware, using remotes and different electrical appliances, prods and other things that Bucky doesn't recognise to make sure the arm reacts in the way they want it to. 

Bucky thinks that that might be one of the worst parts, seeing a part of him react without him telling it do so, as though what they're saying, what they're trying to get him to be is right, that he is no longer to be himself, that he no longer has control of himself.

Bucky doesn't know how long he'll have left.

He knows that his body will go on long after his mind's demise.

He knows that he can't carry on like this much longer.

Bucky has fought, jesus he's fought them every millimetre of the way but it's not enough. They told him that Steve was alive, told him that they had captured Steve too and that they would hurt or even kill him if Bucky didn't co-operate. All his life Bucky had looked after Steve, put food on the table, got him the medication that he needed, pulled him out of fights and then patched him up, but in the clutches of HYDRA Bucky can't do a thing to protect him.

They refused to let him see Steve, played his voice on repeat when Bucky refused to give them the information that they demanded of him or refused to perform the actions that they wanted him to.

They would leave him lying in a pool of his own blood, urine and vomit, listening to Steve shout for him to remind him of the consequences of his actions. That hurt him more than the injuries and the infection.

It hurt more than them peeling the infected skin away from his chest after a particularly bad round with a iron poker. They had left him lying there for more than a day, no one coming to patch him up as they usually did. No one coming to put him back together so that they could rip him apart bit by bit once again. When his skin had become infected, the smell had been almost as unbearable as the agony, instead of medication, they had decided on the quicker option and taken the infected skin off, foregoing painkillers.

Bucky had been strapped down, unable to move or even struggle away from the onslaught as they cut away at the marred skin on his chest until the pus became blood, before soaking him in rubbing alcohol. He had been left alone after that for days. Someone would come once a day to force water down him, not caring if he choked as they poured the liquid down his throat too quickly for him to be able to swallow it. The food they gave him wasn't food, but a strange slimy gel that was an orange colour and tasted like sour milk.

He saw Steve often, in his dazed and delirious state. The blond man small and skinny again, but still perfect. God, so fucking perfect.Still perfect in his stronger state, but that strong, capable man wasn't the Steve that Bucky had known for years.

_It's time for you to come home, Buck. I need you pal._ Steve tells him, reaching out to cup Bucky's face in the soft, gentle way that he always had before. The type of touch that Bucky had long forgotten existed. No one looked at him that way any more, no one thought he'd hung the moon.

HYDRA somehow knew about their relationship, knew what no one else in the world knew, except maybe Peggy Carter. They had used it to mock him, spat at him, called him a fairy. 

Bucky had lost count of the amount of people they'd forced him to suck off. Had pried his mouth open and held a gun to his head as they had forced themselves on him. Coming all over his face and laughing as it dripped from his nose onto the floor before pushing his head down and making him lick it up.

_We thought you liked cock. Thought we'd give you a little treat. There's a good boy._

The torture he has been trained to deal with. He knows what to expect from the physical torture. Even the rape, he prefers the rape. The rape doesn't hurt him physically. Sure he wants to scrub himself from the insides out. Sure he spends hours puking up their come.

But he'd take that a thousand times over if it meant not having to hear Steve calling for him. 

He had refused to give them anything that they wanted, no matter what they did to him. Whipping, waterboarding, electrocution, partial hanging, so many different techniques that Bucky had to wonder where they were getting their ideas from. So many. Too many. Bucky remembers each and every one in intricate detail. He would suffer through them all if it meant keeping Steve safe, wherever he was.

Eventually they realise that pain isn't a motivator for Bucky. Even Steve to some extent wasn’t, because in disclosing the information that they wanted, Bucky would have killed Steve anyway. Bucky hopes that if Steve has to die, that it would be quick rather than from torture or being dissected in a lab for his version of the serum. That was the last thing that he could hope for Steve, the mercy of a quick death.

_I'm sorry Steve, I'm so fucking sorry._

Bucky sobs despite himself sometimes at the helplessness of his situation, at the pain, at the unfairness of it all. Sometimes he even wishes that he could turn back time and gone home when Steve had given him the option. Sometimes for a split second Bucky wishes he'd turned Steve down, but then reality would hit him. There was no way he could have left Steve in that hell hole alone. The guy could pick a fight in an empty room and still not manage to finish it. Bucky had to be there to finish Steve's fights before they finished him.

Sometimes Bucky wondered if he'd joined the commandos purely to prove his usefulness to Steve;Steve who didn't need him anymore. Didn't need him as his saviour any longer.

What use was Bucky if not to look after Steve?

_Til' the end of the line, pal,_ Bucky had told him, and he had meant it.

Whether the end of the line had meant fifty years from then or fifty minutes, Bucky didn't know, he just knew he had to stick with Steve until the end of it. That was his mission and he had to see it through.

Bucky doesn't think that it could get any worse. 

He is wrong.

 

-o-

 

No matter what the soldier forgets, he always remembers the chair. He doesn't know who he was, who he has been, where he is. Nothing; but he remembered the chair. It was where he was whenever he woke up, where he returned to after missions to be fixed up or to be held whilst they decided what to do with him next.

God he hated the chair. 

Sometimes if he was on a longer mission, things filtered back to him, places he didn't recognise, faces he didn't know, as though he were looking through someone else's memories or watching the moving pictures that they showed him whenever they had a target for him.

_Movies, they're called movies,_ his brain supplied, though he didn't know how he knew that. 

He remembered a red haired woman, no, a child, as quick and deadly as a spider. She was too little to be as lethal as she was, with huge, round eyes that had seen too much and a lightning fast right hook that spoke of times where the choice was either kill or be killed.

But mostly he remembered a man.

The man confused the soldier the greatest. Most often the man was small, skinny and sickly. Coughing up blood or gasping into an inhaler. But sometimes he was larger, more muscular. Healthy, the asset realised. Sometimes the blond man would reach out to the soldier, pulling them more closely together, breathing out a name that meant nothing to him.

He is not this man that the blond desired.

He is no one.

He is the asset.

He must complete his mission.

The soldier sees the blond man often, in his dreams, dancing around his mind as they pin him down and the metal cuffs ensure that he can't escape as the electrodes close around his face. He passes out often, the agony too much for him to deal with and he floats, mind taking him back to an unfamiliar place.

A small, cold apartment. Walls covered in pencil drawings, some of a city, some of a brunet who looks vaguely like himself. The asset wonders who the man is, but doesn't linger too long on it. The blond calls to him, motioning him closer. Drawing him into his bed, into his spindly arms. The soldier's body feels dangerous around the blond man, but it can't be him.

The arms that wrap around the blond man's are not his.

The cybernetic arm is gone, replaced with a flesh arm. 

But it's warm, so fucking warm. His insides hurt, _ache_ with the need for this to be real. Can't he just stay here? This is nice. Safe.

The asset often wonders if he's dead, have they killed him this time? This is perfect, too good to be his. Are they showing him someone else's memories to make his own reality seem so much more devastating?

The asset is well accustomed to torture techniques, knows how to hurt someone psychologically to the point of madness and he wonders if this is what they're doing to him. Giving him something he desires before snatching it away. The chair hurts so much.

It feels as though his head is going to explode, as though his heart is about to come bursting out of his chest. The electricity scrambles his brain, is limbs becoming no longer his own, acting without his permission. The impulses cause his body to twitch, his fists clenching and his jaw clamping down on the piece of rubber so hard he wonders how he doesn't bite straight through it. There's a scar on his tongue and he wonders whether he has.

God it hurts.

The asset knows that this is a regular occurrence, how else would he remember it? The fear of it is ingrained into him, body tensing and heart pounding at the mere sight of it. It's enough to tell him that he's been here before, that somewhere deep down in his subconscious he knows what is about to happen to him.

-o-

One of the faces he is sent to kill is familiar, but the asset doesn't know why.

The target is not the blond man, this man has black hair and a moustache and looks at him in horror, as though he's seeing a ghost.

The soldier doesn't understand, but he doesn't have to, he only has to complete his mission.

His target mouths out a name that he doesn't recognise as the driver swerves and goes over the cliff.

The asset's mission is complete; he returns to base and is placed in cryo.

 

-o-

 

"Bucky?"

His head swivels towards the name, eyebrows narrowing in confusion.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" The soldier grits out, pausing for a moment as a memory flickers around the edge of his consciousness.

A blond man. A small apartment.

The man before him looks crushed, as though his world has just been brought down around his ears.

The asset fears that his own has too.

This man is not the blond man in the flashback, yet the asset knows him.

_Who is he? How do I know him? Focus. Complete your mission. He's your mission._

_фокус!_

He cannot afford to be unsuccessful, but he needs to know, who is this man?

The asset raises his gun, finger tensing on the trigger as the man before him looks on, no longer protecting himself, no longer fighting, giving the soldier an easy target.

He sees the man duck, hears rather than sees the rocket and reacts instinctively, ducking out of the way.

_I don't understand._

The soldier glances around in confusion, blurred images flashing around his mind, too quickly for him to fathom their meaning, so he doesn't try.He runs.

 

-o-

 

"The man on the bridge, who was he?" The soldier asks, glancing up at his handler in confusion, attempting to make some sense of the turmoil inside his brain.

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment."

He doesn't remember an earlier assignment.

_Why doesn't he remember?_

"But I knew him." The soldier mumbles, brows furrowing as he tries to remember. 

"Wipe him." He hears his handler give the command.

_No!_ _Not this time!_  

The soldier wants to cry out, wants to fight it.

Not this, not now. Not when he's so close to understanding.

_Please no._

Yet he allows himself to be manhandled backwards, chest rising rapidly as he willingly accepts the rubber mouthguard.

Panic engulfs him as the metal cuffs clip into place and the arms move towards his face.

_No, no. I don't want to forget._

This one hurts the most.

 

-o-

 

"People are gonna get hurt, Buck."

_Who the hell is Buck?_

"Please don't make me do this."

_Complete your mission._

The blond man throws his shield and the soldier deflects it. Hand to hand is his forte, but this man keeps coming back at him no matter what he does to try and out move him. The soldier doesn't understand, he's never faced an opponent with the same strength as him.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

_Who is the blond man._

_You're my mission._

_I am no one._

He sees the apartment, the drawings, the small man. Sees himself clutching the shield that his opponent carries. 

_I don't understand how I know you._

"Shut up!" The soldier yells desperately, a sharp, shooting pain ripping through him as his brain tries to make sense of the images.

_Complete your mission._

Everywhere is on fire, the soldier feels like he is too, as though he is the one self imploding instead of the hellicarrier.

"I'm not going to fight you, you're my friend."

The soldier seizes his chance, lunging forward and snapping his fist into the other man's face.

_Why aren't you fighting back?_

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

"And you're my mission." The soldier growls.

The blond man's face is bloody, his breathing heavy and pained as the soldier continues his assault, as though completing his mission would end the flow of images bouncing around his shattered mind.

The soldier's hits slow as he looks down at the man before him in horror.

A memory finally forming.

A small, skinny blond man with a busted nose.

_I had him on the ropes._

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

A larger man in an army uniform, laughing over a campfire with a black eye and a gash across his cheek.

_Stop, stop, stop, STOP! I don't understand, why don't I understand?!_

The man's voice, hoarse and weak despite the strength behind it, breaks through the soldier's delusions.

"So finish it, 'cause I'm with you til the end of the line."

The soldier's fist lowers as he feels his eyes widen in horror.

_"I can make it on my own."_

_"But the thing is, you don't have to."_

He knows him.

The soldier doesn't know his own name, doesn't know the name of the bloody, beaten man in front of him. But he remembers. He _knows_ this man.

He remembers the chair, the hypnosis, the torture. Not the details, the memories aren't formed yet.

That is the last thing the soldier has time to think before the floor collapses beneath them, he himself only just managing to grab ahold of one of the beams with his metal arm, the blond man standing no chance.

He doesn't understand why this scene seems so familiar. Them falling away from each other like this, knowing that death is imminent. 

The soldier feels terror flow through his veins like ice, knowing that the man will die, he's too injured to be able to pull himself out of the water. He doesn't understand the inherent _need_ he feels to protect him, to save him, but it's the strongest feeling he remembers ever experiencing and so, whilst everything else is shattering around him, whilst everything else is a typhoon of chaos and confusion, he clings onto that feeling and lets go of the beam.

 

-o-

 

James Buchanan Barnes.

That is his name.

_Was_ his name, before his death, before HYDRA.

Bucky Barnes.

Sergeant Barnes, of the 107th regiment. 

The blond man is Steve Rogers, Captain Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America.

The soldier finally understands the two men in his delusions.

Only, they were never delusions, they were his _memories._

In a way the soldier is rather impressed. Impressed with the way his mind has fought to return to itself, despite everything that it has been put through.

He remembers his time with HYDRA, but nothing before. Things filter in in dribs and drabs now, rather than the constant, painful onslaught of sounds, smells, images, _feelings._ In some ways this is better, the memories still hurt him, as though splintered fragments of his mind are piecing themselves back together, and with it the memories return. He doesn't understand the meaning behind them, but they no longer make him want to curl up in a ball and sob in agony. The agony is of a completely different kind now.

"Inseparable on both playground and battlefield. Bucky Barnes was the only Howling Commando to give his life for his country."

The soldier wishes he could remember them. Wishes he remembers smiling at Steve like in the videos in the Smithsonian. The man in those videos regards the blond man with an awed wonder and Steve returns the look when he thinks that Bucky can't see it.

But the soldier is not that man. He may have his face, his body– well, most of it. But he is not him. He cannot be the smiling, strong man in those pictures.

He is no longer Bucky Barnes, no longer the asset.

He is no one.

So he disappears.

 

-o-

 

It takes Steve and his companion, Sam Wilson, seven months, eighteen days, two hours and thirty-six minutes to catch up with him.

The soldier knows that leading them on a wild goose chase around the globe was cruel, but he had to keep moving. As his memories return, the soldier attends to the matter of HYDRA. He doesn't remember his life before HYDRA, but he thinks that it was a good one and therefore he mourns the potential loss of it by taking down every HYDRA base that is known to him. He leaves no one alive,leaving a path of destruction for the two men trailing him to find in his wake. By the time they reach each base, the soldier is already long gone.

Eventually he runs out of bases, runs out of operatives. His handler, _Alexander Pierce,_ died at the hands of the red haired woman. He remembers her too. 

First as a young girl, acting as a decoy, no one suspects a child. 

Then as a young woman, soft and pliant beneath his hands, gasping as he touched her, both unused to a gentle touch, pleasure foreign to them.

He remembers how she came apart under his ministrations, writhing, eyes closed and mouth open in a silent _oh._

This is the onlytime he remembers his hands being used for good, rather than destruction. The only time he is the bringer of pleasure, rather than pain and agony.

Eventually he runs out of places to run to, so he stops. 

Cold, exhausted, mad with confusion and half starved he huddles under a park bridge and waits, knowing that they'll find him eventually.

He feels a strange sense of relief instead of the fear he expected when they do arrive, two days later.

Only the blond man approaches him, whispering the name, still so foreign to the asset, as he cautiously inches forward, palms outstretched even though the soldier sees the slight bulge of the gun at his waist.

He uncurls his own arms to show that he isn't brandishing any weapons, to show that he means them no harm as he looks up at the blond man, chest tightening with agony at the familiarity of his face.

"Hey, Buck." Steve says gently, stopping two feet away and crouching before the soldier.

"Steve?" The soldier croaks, voice uneven, partially from disuse and partially from waking screaming.

The blond man's face lights up for a second, before he quickly contains it, schooling his expression into a mask of concern.

"You know who I am?" He asks cautiously, as though the soldier's next works might make or break him.

The asset nods, "Captain Steve Rogers. But I don't– I don't remember. Why can't I remember?"

He knows how pitiful his voice sounds, hears the weakness there as his words reverberate around his own head. The same question he's been asking for the last seven months. For the last seventy years of his captivity.

"I don't know Buck, I'm sorry." Steve shakes his head, face ashen, blue eyes clouding with tears.

No, that's not right. He wasn't supposed to upset him.

The soldier shakes his head, looking down at his torn boots, the stitching drenched with the blood of the people he's killed. "I don't understand. I don't remember. I don't know who I am."

This time, the man doesn't hesitate.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. Or Bucky Barnes, only your Ma used to call you James."

The soldier's mouth quirks despite himself, wishing that he could remember her.

He's so cold.

So fucking cold, inside and out.

A shiver wracks through his torso and Steve shoots him a concerned glance but doesn't move to try and touch him, for that the soldier is grateful. 

He doesn't know what it is about this man that makes him feel safe, but out of everything in his whole universe right now, the blond man is the only constant, so he chooses to trust his mind.

"I've had enough of running." The soldier whispers, voice barely above a breath, but the blond man hears him regardless. "Please can I come home?"

And when the blond man nods and holds out his hand for the soldier, it feels as though something inside of himself uncoils, loosening the ball of tightly wound string inside the soldier's head ever so slightly, but it's enough to cause him to lose grip of whatever he's been clinging onto for the last few months.

He feels strong arms catch him as he falls forward, void of even the strength to reach for a weapon as the blackness engulfs him and he loses consciousness. 

 

-o-

 

Warmth, comfort, light, weakness. A gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Hunger.

The soldier's auditory senses come back online and he hears a small beeping noise.

_A heart monitor._

This he is used to.

Waking up so quickly and so peacefully, however, not so much. But despite this, he feels a crushing sense of disappointment. A heart monitor means HYDRA.

But the return to consciousness after a spell in cryo usually takes hours. Hours of pain, confusion and disorientation whilst he is prodded with needles and force-fed gel type substances which make him retch, more often than not making him sick, stomach and other organs not ready to function yet.

If he is sick, they make him lick it up no matter where it lands. Sometimes he is sick again and the process continues until he successfully keeps the gel down. Then they feed him more, laughing and claiming that he took all the nutritional value away from it by being a fairy.

Slowly, slowly the soldier's eyes open and he is surprised to find himself looking out at a rather homely room. Sterile and filled with medical equipment, yet somehow managing to still be comforting.

_Where am I?_ He wonders.

Why are there no scientists? Why isn't he strapped down to the chair, or even a gurney?

He sees the drip feeding into his flesh arm, feels the familiar fog of sedatives leaving his system as the serum burns through it.

He groans, turning his head from left to right in an attempt to get his bearings; the movement only succeeding in making him dizzier.

The soldier doesn't understand his calmness. Usually he feels panic no matter where he is, the constant anxiety and paranoia second nature to him after all these months, maybe even years. He doesn't know, can't really remember.

Events are one thing, emotions are another altogether.

He lies there for another few moments, allowing himself the luxury of undisturbed ignorance.

If HYDRA are about to come in and take him off for his next mission or next bout of torture, he might as well enjoy this moment. The last time he were in a room like this, five men had set upon him. Strapping him down and forcing themselves onto him. The soldier hadn't fought them, hadn't seen the point. He was powerless, he couldn't stop them so why create trouble for himself? This was how it had always been, he was under the control of HYDRA. His body was not his own, merely a tool for others to use for their own pleasure or means.

 

He sits up, startling when he hears footsteps approaching outside of the door, looking down at the drip in his arm and wondering if he could safely get it out before the person arrived. The soldier cringes as he moves his legs, realising with both horror and embarrassment that the wire he felt running across his right leg was actually a catheter.

 

This confuses him, HYDRA had never bothered with a catheter before, finding amusement if he wet himself, giving them an opportunity to punish him for his insolence.

 

He looks around, desperate for a weapon, but finding nothing immediate. The soldier quickly rids himself of the IV and the arterial catheter, throwing the IV to one side, but holding the arterial catheter snugly in his metal hand, knowing that, if necessary, a stab to the right place on a person's body will cause them to bleed to death, or without the opportunity, delay someone enough to give him the chance to escape. If he was really desperate, he could use the IV line itself to strangle an opposer. The other catheter, well, it will hurt if that has to be removed in a hurry, but the soldier knows that it will heal quickly.

 

He tenses as he hears the click of the door, waiting, unsure of what will face him when it opens. The man who appears, however, surprises the soldier.

A small, seemingly nervous man with curly brown hair and a kind face steps through the door, followed by the blond.

_Steve._

He remembers suddenly, them finding him under the bridge, him falling– collapsing? The soldier isn't sure, though, from the looks of things, collapsing seems the more logical conclusion.

"Bucky?" Steve asks, both men seeming hesitant to move closer, the smaller brunet eyeing the soldier's hand cautiously, as though he knew of the weapon hidden there.

 

The soldier looks towards him, taking in the pale, almost gaunt appearance of the man before him. He looks like he hasn't slept in months, though his hair and clothes are cleaner than the last time the soldier saw him.

 

He doesn't reply, doesn't associate the name called with himself any more.

 

_He is no one._

_He is the asset, the soldier._

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

 

"Hi– Bucky, I'm Doctor Banner," Dr Banner pauses over _Bucky,_ as though sensing the soldier's hesitation.

"I am not Bucky." He tells them, directing his question at the blond man, who's face falls at the confession.

"You–" the blond, _Steve_ , starts, stopping when Dr Banner shoots him a look that infers that this is something they have spoken about before.

"Okay then." Dr Banner nods, not asking for any further confirmation of name before continuing. "I see you decided against the IV, which is fine, you're fully hydrated and should start to feel more normal when the sedatives wear off."

The soldier watches him as he slowly moves closer.

"May I?" Banner asks, motioning towards Bucky's flesh arm. "I would appreciate it also if you didn't stab me with the arterial catheter in your other arm, it wouldn't end well for either of us if you did, trust me."

The odd thing is, the soldier does.

He's gentle, calm. His breathing doesn't change as he speaks, though the soldier can see that he is stressed. There are no falsities in his words.

The soldier is trained to spot this, even Natalia could not lie to him, nor him to her.

He nods, unclenching his fist and holding out the catheter to the doctor. The soldier knows that he could still strangle him with the wire if things went bad. He's taken Steve on before, knows that Steve will fight him, but not with any real intent to hurt.

 

That is the final thought that the asset has before he allows the doctor to take the catheter from him, both of their movements slow and unsure, but the two men take it as the affirmative that it is andSteve moves forward too, looking as though he is resisting the urge to touch him.

The asset holds his breath and waits to come to, to be dragged from the dream once again. The blond man has never been real before, so why would now be any different? He wonders whatpunishment HYDRA will have concocted for him this time, because with Steve comes pain. It always has. The asset wonders when he will resent the blond man for the pain he causes. The time hasn’t come yet, but how much pain can he endure before he finally snaps and loses the frayed pieces of humanity that he has been clinging onto for so long.

The asset wonders if it will be more peaceful, if everything will hurt less.

He wonders if he will welcome the darkness when the time comes.

 

-O-

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought? What did you like/dislike? Where can I improve?
> 
>  
> 
> Come and say hello to me on my tumblr: [ghostlywhitedirewolf](http://ghostlywhitedirewolf.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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